Cop wore guardian angel wings

Former street urchin saves woman's lives

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

Lang described how in the 1970s, Canada's cities were growing increasingly criminally sophisticated and dangerous as a drug culture around heroin, cocaine and other chemicals led to increased sexual exploitation, abuse and death. He told how he'd been shot at, stabbed, fought off looters and held the dying in his arms.

Hunted pimps

These pimps, he said, resorted to intimidation, torture and even death to keep their "harems" under control.

Taking turns at the podium before a crowd of more than 400 MPs, diplomats and religious leaders, Williams-Jones told how she was born to a 14-year-old child who gave her up to adoption to new parents who were both dwarfs.

When Williams-Jones was four, an uncle - an "upstanding businessman" - started sexually abusing her. When she complained to her parents, they did not believe her.

Although at 10 the most advanced harpist for her age, her behaviour at her privileged home and school reflected her rage and rebellion over the continuing sexual abuse.

"We challenge you to make a difference in the lives of those around you." - Detective Sgt. Douglas Lang

She said she couldn't take the constant teasing about her parents at school and she used to beat up other children and sneak out at night.

By the time she was 12, she finally told a school counsellor about the abuse. And she was placed in a group home.

But it was there that she answered the phone when an imprisoned armed robber called trolling for vulnerable youngsters. They established a relationship and, when he was released from prison two weeks later, Williams-Jones was waiting for him at the prison gates.

He took her to a hotel room where he and some of his criminal colleagues began planning bank robberies. Lang and Williams-Jones met when Lang and his partner broke the hotel room's door down and arrested the three criminals.

"What's this kid doing here?" Lang recalls asking himself as he swept the room with his gun. Describing her as a "cute little munchkin in a designer outfit," but whose behaviour was aggressive and obnoxious, Lang soon discovered that she knew nothing about what these robbers were up to.

He said that most of the young people he's encountered on the streets who had had no caregivers, who were marginalized and had "no life but misery" were like the walking dead, headed for the grave before age 30. But Williams-Jones had a "spark of life."

"This little girl needed extraordinary help," Lang said.

He found her a place for the night. But Williams-Jones "wouldn't stay put." Lang would see her wandering the streets of Vancouver. Whenever he saw her, he'd put her in the back seat of his police car and drive around with her, breaking every rule in the book. If she had ever accused him of impropriety, his career would have been over.

He became friends with the girl's frustrated parents. By the time Williams-Jones was 14, she'd been in 36 foster homes. In one, she injected drugs into a man's neck, but at least there she faced no sexual or physical abuse as she had in some of the other homes.

Cop turned angel

"Thank God. By his grace, I was able to see that," she said.

Now Lang and his wife Georgia have become Williams-Jones' "official dad and mom."

Lang asked the prayer breakfast gathering what was important in their lives?

Money? Power? He said he hoped they would reply relationships.

"We challenge you to make a difference in the lives of those around you."

Lang said that he never suspected that his making a difference in a 12-year-old street urchin's life would be instrumental in the difference she has subsequently made in the lives of hundreds of women in the NOW (New Opportunities for Women) Canada. The group runs safe homes for women, offering life skills programs to help them get their lives on the right track.

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